You may think dangerous propaganda tracts are a relic from Nazi Germany or Communist Russia, but they’re alive right in our American front yards. After President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage last week, the Family Research Council released the short “The Problem with Same-Sex Marriage.”

What a piece of cinematic wonder it is, folks.

Apparently, a truncated version was previously released; but now that President Obama’s aligned himelf with marriage equality supporters, the FRC has released this bigger, longer, uncut version, where cliché doomsday histrionics are given new life.

Hosted by the FRC’s President, Tony Perkins, the film’s save-our-children battle cry is accented with dramatic music and the apocalyptic image of three kids trembling in front of a wedding cake with two grooms on top.

Seriously, when did Adam and Steve become Godzilla and Mothra?

As the film unspools, we see concerned Massachusetts parents get disgusted when their little boy brings home a “diversity bookbag” including the gay-inclusive workbook Who’s in a Family? At the 07:30 mark, we see Mommy and Daddy marching over to the school and demanding their child be protected from learning about filthy homosexuality.

Suddenly school administrator put the father in handcuffs—handcuffs!—and sent him to jail. A martyr for the cause, Daddy breaks down in tears. You know it’s serious shit if a straight man other than Glenn Beck is crying! (Of course Daddy must be skipping over some relevant detail if administrators needed to call the cops on him.)

“Problem” is full of this kind of inanity: Dubious unsourced statistics about kids from same-sex households having a much higher chance of turning out gay; claims that “legal experts agree that religious freedom and same-sex marriage cannot coexist,” (something no legal scholar worth his salt would say). And of course the video ends with an ominous warning about voting on the side of right in the upcoming Presidential election.

It’s easy to dismiss “Problem” as ridiculous—except we can’t. Not when Tony Perkins is given airtime on reputable outlets like CNN and CBS’ Face the Nation, much to the deserved chagrin of GLAAD. Uninformed viewers may mistake Perkins for a qualified pundit, rather than the head of what the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group.

“The Problem with Same-Sex Marriage” reminds us of another infamous anti-gay film, the 1961 propaganda piece “Boys Beware.” This old chestnut may elicit chuckles now, until you realize how similar in tone and intent it is to what Perkins and his lot are foisting on the public today.

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28 Comments

DouggSeven

The guy at 3:57 with the ‘what stinks?’ face is absolutely hilarious! I still don’t get their point that ‘SSM affects the entire country’ where it’s a gay issue? It’s like the Whoopi Goldberg arguement (which I said first, but hers is documented so I digress) ‘if you don’t agree with gay marriage, then don’t marry a gay person’. I was suprised when I didn’t see a ‘Funny of Die’ or ‘Second City’ logo anywhere in that – because that’s exactly what that is…funny.

May 15, 2012 at 1:05pm

Craig R

They have put a new voice over on the royal wedding, those were no the words of the sermon.

How cheap.

May 15, 2012 at 2:05pm

Kristopher

Ugh I didn’t really care about getting married before but now I really want a godzilla and mothra wedding cake.

May 15, 2012 at 3:05pm

B

Regarding “Seriously, when did Adam and Steve become Godzilla and Mothra?”, Queerty editors have to be less cute – I was half hoping to see some cheesy CGI or claymation!

One funny thing was their statement that the percentage of gay kids is much higher for same-sex couples than for opposite-sex couples. They blame this on same-sex marriage without realizing that it could be taken as evidence that homosexuality is genetically determined, or that adoption agencies might tend to place gay kids with same-sex parents because opposite-sex parents tend not to want them.

The Royal Wedding of course was false advertising – one may think that is what one is getting but what one actually gets is closer to a Las Vegas drive-through wedding chapel.

May 15, 2012 at 3:05pm

DouggSeven

@B: You really think their numbers were correct anyway? The clue that they just made up those figures is when they starting talking about how reparative therapy ‘works’, when every official psychological institute disagrees.

May 15, 2012 at 3:05pm

Belize

“Seriously, when did Adam and Steve become Godzilla and Mothra?”

I like you. Enough said.

May 15, 2012 at 4:05pm

Belize

Rob

Wait…did I hear that right? The guy at around the 15:00 mark is saying that in the US, you have freedom of religion before all else (and let’s not even get into whether that’s what the founding fathers intended or not). If I understood his statement, he’s basically saying that therefore, his own religion trumps all other beliefs and all other rights. Whaaaat?!?

At 3:00, I was like, “Oh, hi FRC. I knew I’d see you at some point in this video.”

May 15, 2012 at 7:05pm

Aussie Col

Let me see 10 years of equal marraiage for Canada; hmmm no apocalypse, decrease in HIV cases, decrease in divorce, and no smiting from God. End of story.

May 15, 2012 at 8:05pm

B

No. 5 · DouggSeven wrote, “@B: You really think their numbers were correct anyway?” The point was that their own numbers (correct or not) can be interpreted in multiple ways. I gave two examples, neither having anything to do with same-sex marriage.

They did get the percentage of gay kids with straight parents more or less correct – around 3% of the population, which is the generally accepted numbers (excluding bisexuals and ‘straight curious’ types who “experiment” once or twice but are really attracted to only women.)

I think it would be hilarious to see Tony Perkins trying to field a question in which it is pointed out that the data he is presenting suggests that sexual orientation is genetically determined.

May 15, 2012 at 9:05pm

Jonathonz

I love how the parents are so irritated that there are people that are indoctrinating their kids with acceptance for a diverse world. They’re like “Damn, we want our kids to be homophobic like us!”

May 15, 2012 at 9:05pm

Andy

A safer sex booklet for gay teens? How dare they! All faggots should die of AIDS!

This stuff makes my blood boil.

May 15, 2012 at 10:05pm

Matt

All those stories about “ex-gay” people are really sad. It makes me feel so incredibly bad to see them in forced heterosexual marriages. Do they not know how much happier they could be living true to their orientation? I just think that must be the most unfulfilling life.

May 15, 2012 at 10:05pm

Jeff

IIRC, not ONE of the “ex-gays” expressed that they no longer had desire for the same sex – they just implied that they don’t act on it any longer. Thats not a CURE in my book.

May 16, 2012 at 1:05am

Blah, bla..huh?

The way this presents heterosexuality is so freaking tragic. You have to be subdued, it must be painful, and when you let the children play, make sure they’re hating some faggot. Anyone homo, just as long as God’s hate is intact, so you can know in your life that you are “normal”, and misanthropic to the core. Malice is love, especially when and where it concerns your unsuspecting neighbor, people. Love builds nothing. Be free from love, what does sadism hurt, after all?

This is such childishness in a nation of laws, it’s making me mock heteros, but take heart heteros, you let these people speak for you all of this time. Happy now?

May 16, 2012 at 6:05am

me

The 3% figure of GLBTs in America is ridiculously low. Don’t believe it. To claim that there are only nine million GLBT in the entire United States’ 300 million population is pure horseshit — 30 million plus is more likely. Over a million gays and lesbians marched on Washington in the late 1980s, that would impossibly suggest that around one in nine of us (actually more, since the population in the US was lower) had marched in Washington DC.

Also, 6-12 million kids are estimated to be living in gay-parented homes. At an average of two kids per gay-parented household (even with just one gay parent) that makes between three to six million GLBT American are parents with kids or approximately one third to two thirds of the GLBT community are parents. The 3% percent figure (pulled out of some idiot’s or right-winger’s ass) is just plain ludicrous.

——————————

In October 2002, according to Gallup:

“It may be that no one will ever know for sure. To some people, homosexuality is a matter of perception and definition. Furthermore, many people have trouble admitting their homosexuality to themselves, much less to a researcher. But when Gallup asked Americans for their best estimate of the American gay and lesbian population, the results made all the figures mentioned above look conservative.

Every Fifth Person — at Least

In August 2002*, Gallup asked Americans, in an open-ended format, to estimate the percentage of American men and the percentage of American women who are homosexual. The average estimates were that 21% of men are gay and 22% of women are lesbians. In fact, roughly a quarter of the public thinks more than 25% of men and 25% of women are homosexual. It should be pointed out, too, that many Americans (at least one in six) could not give an estimate.”

I would most likely stand by Masters’ and Johnson’s figures of one sixth (US population) is probably exclusively gay…one sixth exclusively heterosexual…with the remaining four out of six expressing varying degrees of interest or activity as bisexuals at some time in their lives — with a heterosexual pair-bonding preference (and probably a nasty guilt complex because of it in modern times).

All you have to do is look to the ancient world (especially to Ancient Greece) to see these figures played out — that is, before the sex-hating angst of the Judeo/Christian/Muslim corruption of human nature.

May 16, 2012 at 10:05am

Kl

It would astound me if a fair-minded individual could honestly watch this and be convinced that they, too, should enlist in the bigot’s cause because Tony Perkins’ pseudo-documentary full of fallacious drivel. People who would be engaged with this are the baby boomers, the pious right, and many other embarassing yet waning factions of American culture. So, don’t bother refuting something so hideously disguised as argument from this piece of propoganda; these people only have one weapon to employ in keeping their day jobs to sustain their useless lives: fear.

May 16, 2012 at 10:05am

B

No. 15 · “me” wrote, “The 3% figure of GLBTs in America is ridiculously low. Don’t believe it.” The 3% figure indicates the fraction of the population that is gay and excludes bisexuals, etc., so it is a subset of the LGBT population.

May 16, 2012 at 6:05pm

Warren

Those types don’t mind at all if gay people get married…it’s when they marry someone they actually love rather than someone that is forced on them that has them all upset.
No wonder that 50% of opposite-gender marriages end in divorce.

May 16, 2012 at 10:05pm

B

No. 15 · me wrote, “In August 2002*, Gallup asked Americans, in an open-ended format, to estimate the percentage of American men and the percentage of American women who are homosexual. The average estimates were that 21% of men are gay and 22% of women are lesbians. In fact, roughly a quarter of the public thinks more than 25% of men and 25% of women are homosexual. It should be pointed out, too, that many Americans (at least one in six) could not give an estimate.”

You can’t be serious! Thaty Gallop poll did not measure the percentage of gays in the U.S., but rather the percentage that others thought were gay. whether correctly or not!

Also, Kinsey’s original results ( http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/resources/ak-data.html ) indicated that “4% of white males had been exclusively homosexual after the onset of adolescence up to the time of their interviews,” Kinsey also claimed that “10% of males in the sample were predominantly homosexual between the ages of 16 and 55” but “predominantly” means they had sex more often with men than with women.

May 17, 2012 at 12:05am

1equalityUSA

Good propaganda. First speak of the legal issues then slam orientation as something that can be changed. My gaydar went off about 12 times when these people spoke. The only thing that changed was taking up residence in a huge closet.

May 17, 2012 at 11:05am

Peter Rock Favazza

Jesus is not amused by this video. I am sure He’s making a list and checking it twice before he lets in anyone who claims to be a Christian and then condemns homosexuals. I am sure, as King James who was responsible for the Bible being translated in the 16th century, and also a gay man who had many lovers and three great affairs with other men and then proclaimed to his parliament that he was gay just like Jesus and Jesus’ lover, John, and then claim that they are only following “what the Bible says” which is the biggest conspiracy of all since it has been proven that the Bible NEVER condemns homosexuality itself but rather condemns Temple prostitutes, male or female in the correct meaning of the original text and in the context intended included, with the actual original meaning shows that ignorance is the biggest sin of all especially when the truth is readily available to anyone with a computer, a modem and average intelligence. Every Bible quotation in the Old and New Testament that has been used to condemn the “gay lifestyle” whatever that is, has been proven mistranslated on purpose by old men with an agenda four centuries ago. But hope is on the horizon and remembering the words of Jesus , “This too shall pass.” We shall persevere and succeed in our quest of equality for all Gods children, gay straight or bi. Time is on our side, with apologies to Mick Jagger.

May 18, 2012 at 10:05am

Peter Rock Favazza

@1equalityUSA:My gaydar went off about 12 times when these people spoke.. So true, my ears were hurting from the gaydar pinging!

Aussie Col

@Peter Rock Favazza: Great comment. Thanks for posting about King James, I never knew that and it adds to my study on the history of the Bible. Cheers

May 19, 2012 at 2:05am

anonymous

The subject on same sex marriage has been debated for centuries. It is not the last or the first time this topic has been brought up! Wanting the same rights in a job, community, education, and health. Should be on the list of everyone’s priority. Homeless people in America is more important to address than same sex marriage. The political social status between the rich and the poor has gone on far too long. As long as the rich get their votes in and stay in power they don’t care what happens. Money over morals. 2012 will be a battle…make the right decision America!